lincoln center for performing gnomes
I sit in Charles de Gaulle - or is it Zurich or JFK, I don't know any more - a fresh visa burning it's patriotic colours into my passport.
LINCOLN CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS
...and I realise that, after this draining run out from Salzburg to Paris which has cost the orchestra a thousand euros for a concert for which I am to be paid one hundred and fifty, I actually do not want to go to new York for twenty four hours. I want to go home.
I think of brunch in Zabars, margueritas in an old Mexican dive in the village where I used to hang, Fairway coffee, bagels and lox and cream cheese up near 94th and broadway; I think of my Mercury Cougar cruising like an aeroplane along the LIE, frozen last trains back to Stony Brook on the LIRR; I think of my SUNY friends all absent from the city, playing in festivals in Santa Fe or Melbourne, teaching in Meadowmount or Greenwood, or having moved to LA or Paris; I think of my teacher and my surrogate brother who led me to him, both quartetting in a far away state; I remember that my two oldest friends from the UK - one Irish Portuguese living in San Francisco and one English living in Adelaide - are playing in the Mostly Mozart Festival the day after me and wonder if I might get to touch base with them; and, rather than get excited about revisiting the Big Apple, I merely feel like a performing gnome spinning in space.
Sade is singing:
"You're the rock that I cling to
You're the one I swim to in a storm
Like a lover's rock"
I am on the ground but profoundly travel sick. I can't call Julian as our phone line is down. I can't go to an internet cafe and see today's painting as he hasn't been able to put a new one up with no connection. I can't call him on the mobile as he doesn't have a 'reseau' at the house. I can't hear him humming, Oscar moving his bowl around or Manon's hungry-for-love rumble.....
I glance down at the new treasure in my lap and I see that the American Embassy have spelled my name wrong.
In the space of a few seconds my new visa is drenched.
LINCOLN CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS
...and I realise that, after this draining run out from Salzburg to Paris which has cost the orchestra a thousand euros for a concert for which I am to be paid one hundred and fifty, I actually do not want to go to new York for twenty four hours. I want to go home.
I think of brunch in Zabars, margueritas in an old Mexican dive in the village where I used to hang, Fairway coffee, bagels and lox and cream cheese up near 94th and broadway; I think of my Mercury Cougar cruising like an aeroplane along the LIE, frozen last trains back to Stony Brook on the LIRR; I think of my SUNY friends all absent from the city, playing in festivals in Santa Fe or Melbourne, teaching in Meadowmount or Greenwood, or having moved to LA or Paris; I think of my teacher and my surrogate brother who led me to him, both quartetting in a far away state; I remember that my two oldest friends from the UK - one Irish Portuguese living in San Francisco and one English living in Adelaide - are playing in the Mostly Mozart Festival the day after me and wonder if I might get to touch base with them; and, rather than get excited about revisiting the Big Apple, I merely feel like a performing gnome spinning in space.
Sade is singing:
"You're the rock that I cling to
You're the one I swim to in a storm
Like a lover's rock"
I am on the ground but profoundly travel sick. I can't call Julian as our phone line is down. I can't go to an internet cafe and see today's painting as he hasn't been able to put a new one up with no connection. I can't call him on the mobile as he doesn't have a 'reseau' at the house. I can't hear him humming, Oscar moving his bowl around or Manon's hungry-for-love rumble.....
I glance down at the new treasure in my lap and I see that the American Embassy have spelled my name wrong.
In the space of a few seconds my new visa is drenched.
posted by ruth at 11:30 AM
4 Comments:
Thinking of you, maybe on the plane by now, or maybe still waiting... travel's draining and unreal and not much fun, isn't it? only becomes fun sometimes because of what we're projecting forward. It must be demanding to arrive too fast in a daze of unreality and delve for the music deep inside you. After a Summer of speeding through change and beauty, though, a lazy homecoming to the vendage and the olive harvest?...
oh yes oh yes oh yes, jean! hangin' on to those autumn thoughts!
Chin-up old love! Home soon.
BTW was missing my daily dose of Julian!
Such hard work, all that travelling. Not nearly as glamorous as it's often thought to be. Just exhausting and grimy. But Jean and Caroline are right, it'll soon be autumn.
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